The workshop Manifesto for the Just City is a digital lecture and debate series composed of four online sessions with leading academics and practitioners in the fields of urban theory, urban planning and spatial justice. Upon participation in the online lecture series, teams of students are invited to draft a Manifesto for the Just City, expressing their visions for cities that are sustainable, fair and inclusive for all.

This activity is organised by the TU Delft Centre for the Just City, and partners. This activity is supported by the Delft Design for Values Institute (DDfV), the TU Delft platform for discussing values in technology and design.

The Manifesto for the Just City is a publication by the TU Delft Centre for the Just City. ... Read more

In light of rapid urbanisation and the accelerating threats of climate change, scale and multitude are what set the Global North and South apart. Yet, as this course exposes, the issues faced by urban areas have resembling themes and characteristics, regardless of economic status or geographic location. Therefore, in the context of sustainable urban development, the binary dichotomy of the terms ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ must be contested. While a focus on Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and the MENA region, Rethink the City attempts to understand the transboundary nature of urban issues and provide a platform to gather insights beyond borders. It is only by learning from other narratives that we can collectively address the complex challenges ahead. ... Read more

This is the third volume in the "Manifesto for the Just City" series published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing. This is a project spearheaded by the Centre for the Just City at the Delft University of Technology. The Manifestos in this book endeavour to envision alternative, positive urban futures as a counterpoint to prevailing cynicism and political disillusionment. This exercise is largely based on the ideas of Professor Faranak Miraftab on practices of hope and decoloniality.

The 81 Manifestos written by 313 students from 63 universities around the world come in the wake of a four-part workshop in October 2022, in which TU Deft together with its many partners, invites students from all over the world to listen to the accounts of leading academics and practitioners whose knowledge touches aspects of spatial justice and to articulate their own ideas for what makes the just city. The scholars invited in 2022 included Professor Faranak Miraftab from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, US, Professor Clarissa Freitas from the Federal University of Ceará in Fortaleza, Brazil, Dr. Gynna Millan Franco from the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, Professor Vanesa Castán Broto from the University of Sheffield in the UK and Professor Hiba Bou Akar from Columbia University in New York, US. Teachers from around the world who use the Manifesto as a class exercise have also contributed with short essays.

The Centre for the Just City was set up at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology in response to the pressing challenges of rampant social inequalities affecting the cohesion and the sustainability of cities and communities. Recognising the vital need to address these issues, the Centre emerged as a platform for research, education, and outreach activities for the creation of just cities. Since its inception, the Centre has been at the forefront of bridging theory and practice, fostering collaborations, and influencing policies and actions that contribute to making cities equitable, sustainable, and inclusive. For more information, please visit https://just-city.org.
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The Manifesto for the Just City comes in the wake of the realisation that socio-spatial justice is a crucial dimension for sustainability transitions. Growing inequality and the erosion of the public sphere undermine the social and political structures required to fight climate change, pandemics and other systemic shocks. At the same time, profound cynicism and scepticism have gripped our minds. This is paralysing us. Following the words of Professor Faranak Miraftab, we need to decolonise our minds, and try to imagine a different world and new kinds of relationships among ourselves and between us and the planet.This book aims to encourage students to formulate their own visions for the Just City and for a just transition.

The second volume of 'A Manifesto for the Just City', published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing and funded by the Delft Design for Values Institute, gathers texts from scholars discussing aspects of the just city (Professors Faranak Miraftab, Mona Fawaz, Mariana Fix, Romola Sanyal, Roberto Rocco and Caroline Newton) and showcases 63 manifestos written by 256 students from 48 universities all over the world. ... Read more

This book is composed of a general introduction followed by 18 chapters written by teachers and researchers from TU Delft, as well as frequent collaborators, each describing an issue or tool used in Spatial Planning, as it is taught and researched at our university. The book aims to give readers around the world an introduction to how spatial planning is conceived at TU Delft. Spatial planning is a highly idiosyncratic discipline and is conceived differently around the world. In most places, spatial planning is part of an architectural approach to the city, in which design exists almost autonomously, while in other places it is part of a political-economical approach to the city. What distinguishes Delft is the bridge we have managed to build between design and politics, and the way we understand space as foundational for the understanding of socio-economic processes. This is anchored on a Dutch tradition of city-making in which issues of “maakbaarheid” (roughly translated by “feasibility”), a guiding concept in Dutch society, which was built upon an exceedingly difficult territory to plan, design and manage. Spatial planning in the Netherlands is hence a combination of planning, design and management that is unique. Simultaneously, spatial planning as a discipline in the Netherlands is rather forward-thinking and uniquely equipped to deal with the great societal challenges of our time (climate change, pandemics, growing inequality, etc) and may be useful for students and teachers elsewhere seeking to learn from other traditions. Each chapter addresses issues that we see as central to the way of teaching and researching spatial planning. ... Read more

This book addresses the need to re-imagine and re-conceptualise the Just City in light of recent systemic shocks: climate change, the pandemic, a generalised erosion of democratic standards and more. It contains texts by a number of guests and 43 manifestos written by students from 25 universities from all over the world. A "Manifesto for the Just City" comes in the wake of the realisation that socio-spatial justice is a crucial dimension for sustainability transitions. Growing inequality and the erosion of the public sphere undermine the social and political structures required to fight climate change, pandemics and other systemic shocks. With this book, we have sought to encourage students to formulate their own visions for the Just City and for a just transition. This book is result of an Urban Thinkers Campus organised between 9 and 30 November 2020. The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) model is an initiative of UN-Habitat's World Urban Campaign, conceived in 2014 as an open space for critical exchange between stakeholders and partners. It aims to promote debate and action on sustainable and inclusive urbanization upholding the principles and guidelines contained in the New Urban Agenda, launched at Habitat-III in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador. ... Read more

The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Integrated affordable housing, for instance, has come to the top of the agenda once again, now propelled by the realisation that slum dwellers (a staggering 1 billion people around the world) and homeless people are particularly vulnerable to health crises and other societal shocks. The pandemic has been saluted as an opportunity to implement far-reaching transformation of our societies towards sustainability and justice, but little signs of systemic change have actually surfaced. For example, several cities around the world claim they will overhaul public space, take space from private cars, and invest more on green spaces, bicycle paths and quality public mobility. But little has been said about addressing the structural causes of inequality. The champions of the circular economy salute the pandemic as a new dawn for more human-centred capitalism, for the abandonment of exploitation and unfair distribution, and a world where workers can find decent housing, health, work and leisure. But what is actually happening on the ground? This UTC explores some of these issues by giving a platform to people with knowledge from the ground. It also discusses the many advances being made towards an inclusive green transition, through the European Green Deal and a growing activist movement in the UK. This event was organised by GUL, the Global Urban Lab of the TU Delft University of Technology, a communication and action platform that brings visibility and articulation to TU Delft staff and students doing work on topics of urbanisation in the Global South. ... Read more